Today, Henry Gates; Tomorrow, You

After a week, the turbid tale of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and the
Cambridge police has finally settled into the tedium of the 24-hour news cycle,
singularly focused – but predictably superficial – in its debate over whether
race played a prevailing role in Gates’ doorstep arrest on July 16.

That happens when a black, liberal scholar charges the white police officer
who arrested him with racial profiling, and when the president, who happens
to be black, says the police acted "stupidly" for doing so. The debate
has thus found its shopworn but comfortable partisan trajectory, with Democrats
using Gates to reopen a "dialogue" on race relations that forever
churns but goes nowhere, and Republicans, largely represented by the right-wing
blogosphere, loyally falling in behind the cops, holding the Thin Blue Line on
the political front.

It has become a timeless political and media waltz, one that serves neither
side, especially the actual victims of racial profiling.

But an interesting and even momentarily hopeful thing happened in that fertile
space of time between when a news story breaks and the mainstream media’s wagons
circle a simple, safe narrative. People started talking about the police. And
civil liberties. The phrase "contempt
of cop," referring to bogus arrests triggered when an officer perceives
a challenge to his authority (typically when an individual in an exchange refuses
to fully cooperate, is deemed disrespectful, asks too many questions, or asserts
his rights), was invoked in relation to Gates in places as mainstream as National
Public Radio.

On both the Left and the Right, commentators and bloggers were reflecting
– however briefly – on their own relationships with police, and the ever widening
gulf between “civilians” and cops, made more pronounced by post-9/11 hyper-criminalization
and 21st-century communications like cell-phone cameras and YouTube. Early
critics wondered openly not only about racial profiling – which remains an
important touchstone here – but about police egos and the punishment for not
keeping one’s mouth shut.

“What I see as more significant [than race] is the phenomenon of persons
being arrested who challenge the authority of police,” David Rudovsky, senior
fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Philadelphia, told the
Christian
Science Monitor on July 24, in a discussion of "contempt of cop"
charges. “It’s street punishment.”

Former congressman and federal prosecutor Bob Barr agrees. "Reducing
this simply to a racial conversation pretty much guarantees future problems,"
he said in an interview with Antiwar.com. "The fact of the matter is,
this situation raises troubling questions about citizens being required to
be overly submissive and condescended to by police." Sure, the badge should
be respected, he added, but if the police are acting unreasonably, "I
don’t think the citizenry ought to sit back and take it."

Frustratingly, others suggest passivity is the only viable approach when dealing
with police: "So you want to make friends, join the glee club," writes
Neely
Tucker at the Washington Post. "You want to yell at people
who are lousy at their jobs, go to a Redskins game. But, all things considered,
Don’t Mess With Cops. It usually works out better that way."

Michael Mechanic cuts to the quick in his own take for
Mother Jones: "I understand Gates’ indignance and what he must
have been feeling at that moment. … But get righteous on a street cop and you
will lose every single goddamn time. Gates should have known as much."

So we have become a nation of passive, potential suspects, and often it is
the random circumstance like a jammed door that can bring it all down, superseding
in an instant everything else – background, race, social class, pristine criminal
records – everything.

One year ago Wednesday, Berwyn
Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo found this out most horrifically while he and
his mother-in-law were restrained with cuffs by county police and shoved onto
his kitchen floor. As he lay face-to-face with the bloody corpses of the beloved
family dogs – which had been summarily shot by police moments earlier – Calvo
must have wondered how his own seemingly solid identity as good neighbor and
community leader had so quickly evaporated with the firepower of the SWAT team
now swaggering around his Maryland home.

Unlike Gates, Calvo was in plastic handcuffs before he could even demand,
"Do you know who I am?!"

The cops had busted down the Calvo’s door on a no-knock warrant (that we know
now never existed) with the intent of arresting him for the 32-pound package
of marijuana that had been delivered by the mailman and was sitting on his
doorstep. But the package wasn’t meant for him; it was part of a drug dealer’s
mail-order scheme (that the police were already aware of), involving unwitting
residential addressees. The mayor and his wife were later cleared, but to date
the police have not apologized for killing the dogs and have maintained the
circumstances at the time warranted the paramilitary response. The Calvos are
reportedly suing the Prince George’s County Police and Sheriff’s Office, but
as this February recount
suggests, the psychological trauma is enduring.

In a separate
request for a civil rights inquiry last August, Calvo invoked a
2006 study by Radley Balko and Joe Berger that found botched law enforcement
raids had increased across the country, along with the frequency of SWAT "call-outs"
– 3,000 a year to 40,000 in 2001:

"More disturbing, we now have received reports of similar misconduct
involving other innocent homeowners, including invasion of the homes of other
innocent county residents and killing of other innocent family pets. This
appears to be a pattern and practice in our law enforcement agencies where
a lack of training and supervision is apparent."

Patti Davis, daughter of the late president Ronald Reagan, gave
voice to what many law-abiding, white suburbanites were likely thinking
when they eyed the clean-cut images of the pre-raid Calvos, smiling as they
walked the black Labradors they had loved as their own children:

"We have all been living in a climate of ‘shoot (or accuse) first,
ask questions later.’ And that attitude is contagious. … Prince George’s official
county Web site defines itself as ‘a county of livable communities.’ That’s
what we all wish for – a livable community, a home where we feel safe. We want
to feel that if the bad guys come, we can call the police and they will be
the good guys. We want to believe that if we’re innocent, armed men with government
badges won’t handcuff us and shoot our pets and wave their weapons in our faces.

"But more and more of us don’t believe that."

Just a month ago, a 72-year-old grandmother was tased by a patrolman twice
her size after she refused to cooperate during a routine traffic stop. As
the video shows, grandma was being stubborn, used at least one expletive,
and would not comply with the officer’s request to sign a speeding ticket and
stand two steps away, behind her truck. He tased her, leaving her writhing
on the ground, mewling eerily like an injured animal.

This recalls the case of 71-year-old Eunice
Crowder in Portland, Ore., in 2003. Allegedly hard of hearing and vision,
she tangled with a city worker who was cleaning up her yard on a warrant. Police
were brought in. Her glass eye popped out when they hit her in the head. She
was pushed to the dirt and tased three times. She eventually settled for $145,000
in a suit against the city.

Of course, not all Taser tales end with a fat check for the victim. In the
now infamous "Don’t
Tase Me Bro!" incident at the University of Florida in 2007, school
officials determined the police were quite right in tasing student Andrew Meyer,
who refused to stop shouting questions at John Kerry after the senator gave
a speech. Meyer might have been the butt of a few jokes (a 50,000-volt shock
to the body is funny!), but the fact that police and other government officials
continue to defend the growing use of Tasers to immobilize individuals, even
children and the mentally
ill, even when it kills
people, is nothing to laugh at.

Surely outrage is in short supply. Often it seems futile. Public officials
more often than not take the side of police, maintaining a nearly religious
deference to law enforcement that cannot be brooked by video evidence or a
disgruntled citizenry.

Take this guaranteed cringe-worthy
video. It depicts clearly unhinged Oklahoma state trooper Daniel Martin
choking paramedic Maurice White while a patient waits inside an idling ambulance
on the way to the hospital. While it is obvious to anyone watching that Martin
had no regard for the fate of the patient (he even appears to threaten her
family members as they beg him to release White) his ego-driven, unprovoked
physical attack on the paramedic lands him a mere five-day suspension and an
anger management class.

"There are no more checks and balances in these sorts of situations,
and there need to be," charges Barr. "Public officials need not be
afraid to say, yes, we respect our police, but they make mistakes and we need
to look into this."

Journalists aren’t immune either, like Asa Eslocker, who was manhandled
and arrested by Denver police while he was trying to cover a story during
the Democratic National Convention last November. His alleged crime? Refusing
to leave a public sidewalk in front of a hotel where a number of VIPs
were gathering.

Not surprisingly, after being hauled to jail in handcuffs, the charges were
dropped.

Carlos Miller, a Miami journalist, recently started
a blog describing his own arrest after he refused to cease photographing
a traffic stop on a public street. In April, he linked to a video of two El
Paso journalists being arrested for covering the scene of an accident (in other
words, doing their jobs), and more recently, a
tape of an Idaho man being sodomized by a police Taser. The officers in
that case have been "disciplined," according
to news reports.

Unfortunately, while members of the so-called elite media like James Taranto
of the Wall Street Journal, acknowledge
that "arresting Professor Gates was an unwise use of the officer’s authority,"
exploring this theme further seems unworthy of their attention. If they had,
they’d easily find a body of case law defending Gates’ position. See Poocha
and Duranfor
examples of men who were much more belligerent toward police than Gates but
whose First Amendment right to free speech ultimately shielded them from conviction.

Now that should be the story. But as of Sunday, Gates has merely sparked
what the Washington Posttiredly
calls "a national conversation on race and law enforcement."
Baloney. The "national conversation" merely allows the media to go
on virtual autopilot while the he-said-she-said/black versus white narrative
takes over, leaving any analysis of the law enforcement part a lifeless afterthought.

Even Taranto’s explanation, that the original Sturm und Drang occurred
between "two stubborn men," is a cop-out. As Maureen Dowd said
Saturday, "the strong guy with the gun has more control than the weak
guy with the cane." That might be the best place to start, if a real conversation
is what we’re after.

Author: Kelley B. Vlahos

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, is a longtime
political reporter for FoxNews.com and
a contributing editor at The American Conservative.
She is also a Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today magazine. Her Twitter account is @KelleyBVlahos.

we cant have a good police state if all of you are gonna ruin it by complaining. and if our police are not aloud to attack any one they want for any reason, or none at all… im afraid al qaeda has already one

Dowd also said that "As the daughter of a police detective, I always prefer to side with the police." THAT's the best place to start. It tips us to the certainty that Dowd will never dig to the level where the really dangerous stuff is. Such as an analysis of race that concludes that race doesn't exist, biologically. Or that racism is based in class, and that class is all about power and property, specifically productive property. Those who own productive property want and need cheap labor. Free, if they can get it, and in many places even that is still available. Take the family farm or business as a simple example. So if you own productive property, you will craft and enforce (with money and guns) laws that maximize your power and minimize or eliminate the power of everyone else, especially workers. The race lie will help you do that. The cops will understand, consciously or not, that their interests lie mainly with you. They will help you.
This is the dictatorship we live in. It's called fascism for lack of a better term. And it's what we truly should be talking about, in the Gates context and a thousand others

Justin, What on earth is this rubbish doing on your website!? Obama probably staged this whole thing as his agenda goes under the waves, screaming the bloody flag of racism. Kelly, if you want to turn your brain on, answer me this: Whalen calls the police and is still standing there the whole time until they get there. Meanwhile, the driver in a suit and a limo carries in a bunch of suitcases, probably hugs Gates goodbye, and drives peacefully away. Whalen lied that there were backpacks. Her lawyer is a well established legal prostitute like Sharpton and obfuscates the facts. How could Whalen have told the cops that she merely saw two black guys go into the house? This is all a setup, cooked up by Obama, Gates, and the First Lady to cry wolf to distract attention from the failure of Obama's presidency. Furthermore, Sotomayer is on tap and they want to play the race card on that one. The affirmative-action babies' days are not going to last another 25 years. 40 years is 40 years too much and has caused the present utter destruction of our economy. Wake out of your politically correct stupor. Jason, how could such a Agent like this be considered antiwar, when Obama kills daily at an acceleration rate?

Uh huh. So, in your view, Obama has the power to pull off any conspiracy large or small, and what he chooses to do is get his friend arrested on a minor charge that is later dismissed? Why didn't I see it before? The man's brilliant!

I'm so glad we enabled comments on all our articles. So enlightening. Keep up the good work.

Police used to be called "Peace Officers".
Now they are called "Law Enforcement Officers".
That in itself makes all the difference in the world between "Us" and "Them"
Furthermore, the "Law Enforcement Officers" are being militarized, which makes things even worse.

During the '70's and later, the LAPD had a reputation for not only excessive force but officers continually using their badge and gun to do as they pleased at minor traffic stops, etc. Living there until '83, we all knew to behave when stopped for any reason or risk arrest or worse. It was common knowledge cops would run tags when they saw an attractive woman driving in order to get her name. They would stop her hoping to get a date–This was common. I knew cops who used their uniform and gun to do as they pleased to a citizen and laughed about it. The Rampart Div debacle is an example of a police force run amok–It has gotten worse since 9/11. Arming these cavemen with tasers was a horrible idea as they now use it when it was obviously not needed. I don't see this steady march of fascism being turned back. We have indeed become a police state.

Some important details left out of this article: there is not a shred of evidence that the cop was perpetrating any racist act, including profiling, that allegedly provoked Gates' angry response. Gates' version of what took place inside the house doesn't square with the cop's excellent background or explain the cop's motivation for alleged racial profiling. What we do know is what took place outside the house, to wit, Gates' loud and vociferous racial accusations about the cop in front of a public audience. It seems to me that the cop took offense at the embarrassing personal nature of the racial accusations. I don't know how many of us civilians, much less cops, would have been able to walk away from Gates' diatribe which the cop evidently regarded as hugely unfair. Advising the cop to walk away is easy. If the cop saw walking away as granting Gates an unfair victory, how would this then impact on the reputations of the cop and the Cambridge Police Department?